Gilley trial to begin today

STOCKTON - The search for a 23-year-old woman who disappeared in 2011 was over when authorities confirmed the identity of a body found in an Escalon cornfield was, in fact, Dalene Carlson.

Jennie Rodriguez-Moore

STOCKTON - The search for a 23-year-old woman who disappeared in 2011 was over when authorities confirmed the identity of a body found in an Escalon cornfield was, in fact, Dalene Carlson.

More than two months and an extensive search had gone by, but prosecutors finally had the missing link to charge with murder the last person seen with Carlson - Jason Ross Gilley.

Gilley, 27, goes on trial today in San Joaquin County Superior Court, where attorneys will lay out in opening statements the evidence they plan to present. The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.

Gilley, who denies killing Carlson, had been arrested twice during the investigation - the first time days after the disappearance. He had given police conflicting statements of his last encounter with Carlson.

Those statements were not enough to hold Gilley in jail, according to prosecutors.

The evidence they needed surfaced when a farmer located Carlson's decomposing remains one October day, more than two months after her disappearance.

The missing-person's case sparked a wide search for Carlson that included divers scouring rivers.

Medical examiner reports indicate Carlson was shot five times with bullets from a small-caliber weapon.

The May before her death, Carlson had left her hometown of Sandpoint, Idaho, to spread her wings.

Stockton became her new home, where her aunt, Margret Baker, and cousins opened their home to Carlson.

Her newfound freedom lasted but a few months. On Aug. 7, 2011, Carlson, described as an outgoing young woman, vanished from Finnegan's Pub and Grill, a popular nightspot she frequented.

A Stockton police investigation revealed Gilley was the last person seen with Carlson, as surveillance footage at a north Stockton Food 4 Less grocery store captured images of the two approaching a register to purchase alcohol.

Initial persons of interest included Carlson's boyfriend, Jacob Evangelisi, and James Cosens, a friend with whom Evangelisi told police he thought had been intimate with Carlson.

Authorities, however, eliminated them as suspects and focused their investigation on Gilley, who changed his account of his last encounter with Carlson several times.

At one point, he told investigators he and Carlson got into an argument after having sex and he dropped her off at an unknown location 40 minutes south of Stockton.

Gilley is charged with first-degree murder and special circumstances of kidnapping and rape. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.